Why inevitable? Because the writing was on the wall. There was no way he was going to win. In fact, he never would have gotten out of the Democratic primary.

He's unpopular with everyone, but especially with Democrats, and of course Connecticut is a heavily blue state.

And it's not like Republicans would have backed him given his return to the Democratic fold post-2008 (even if Democrats should have given him the boot), with votes for health-care reform and DADT repeal. And there certainly aren't enough genuine independents to propel him to victory -- and, regardless, they don't much care for him either.

Perhaps we haven't heard the last of him. Perhaps Obama, always eager to reach out (and to irritate the left), will appoint him to some cushy post. Perhaps he'll continue to make the talk-show rounds as an "independent." Even if voters don't like him, the news media do, just as they liked McCain for so long, until he lost his marbles.

It's always been about him, and about his shameless career-minded opportunism, but he's managed to convince many in the media, and many in Washington, that he's a go-to spokesman for bipartisanship. This is ridiculous, of course, but it will allow him to remain a visible public figure spinning his self-aggrandizing nonsense should he choose to go that route.

Either way, at least he realizes that his time in the Senate is up.

**********

So... good riddance, Joe.

I once wrote that the Democratic Party should be a big enough tent to include the likes of you, but you did all you could to be a thorn in Democrats' sides, including being a (pro-Bush) Republican for all intents and purposes, culminating in your despicable pro-McCain smear campaign against Obama in 2008, and perhaps you realize now that the Republican Party, moving further and further to the right, certainly has no place for you, nor even for your pal McCain.

And your retirement means that your seat will be easier for the Democrats to win, and to win with a far more progressive candidate than you ever were.

As I joked back in 2009, when you were trying to position yourself as a bipartisan deal-maker on health-care reform (as long as it didn't include a public option and was generally Romney-style Republican), borrowing a hilarious joke from Stewie Griffin (originally directed at Meg):

In an attic somewhere, there's a portrait of Joe Lieberman getting prettier.